Tourism bosses call for halt to quarantine
NEARLY 80 of the biggest names in the travel and tourism industry have written to Priti Patel calling on her to ditch the “unworkable, ill-thought out and damaging” 14-day quarantine plans.
The 78 signatories – who include the bosses of leading hotels and travel firms – say quarantine is the “very last thing” the industry needs as the Government seeks to gradually end lockdown and restart the economy.
They warn that the economic outlook was already “grim” and quarantine would cause further serious damage to a sector that accounts for almost four million jobs – 11 per cent of the country’s entire workforce – and 9 per cent of gross domestic product.
George Morgan-grenville, the chief executive of tour operator Red Savannah, who is leading the appeal, said: “The quarantine plans are poorly thought out, wholly detrimental to industry recovery and are more or less unworkable.
“Signatories to this letter are more used to competing ferociously but, on this issue, we are united.”
The names read like an industry Who’s Who, ranging from Sir Rocco Forte, the veteran hotelier, and bosses of The Savoy, Claridge’s, Café Royal, Connaught, Ritz, Goring, Dorchester and Mandarin Oriental, to travel firms such as Abercrombie and Kent, Scott Dunn, Jules Verne and DER Touristik.
In the letter to the Home Secretary, seen by The Daily Telegraph, they urged her to “withdraw immediately” the proposed legislation to impose the mandatory quarantine from June 8, which will require all international arrivals, including returning Britons, to self-isolate for 14 days.
The signatories criticised the Government for failing to take any action at the start of the outbreak, “making it
easy for thousands of potentially-affected passengers to spread the virus into the wider UK community.”
Warning of a “high probability” of a “severe recession”, they said the travel and tourist industry had been particularly hard hit in the lockdown because it had to continue to employ staff to “either cancel, or rearrange existing, often complex, bookings”.
“This means that whilst facing up to a 100 per cent cancellation of forward bookings, cash flows are stretched even further in order to look after and protect existing consumers,” they added.
The letter said the Government had also been “woefully slow to react and procrastinated to the point of absurdity” over its backing for refund credit notes, which allow people to re-book holidays or receive a cash refund at a later date.
“The very last thing the travel industry needs is a mandatory quarantine which will deter foreign visitors from coming here, deter UK visitors from travelling abroad, and most likely cause other countries to impose reciprocal quarantine requirements on British visitors,” the signatories said.
France has announced it will ask all travellers from Britain to self-quarantine for 14 days from June 8.
The 78 said there was “substantial merit” in the plan put forward by Grant Shapps, the Transport Secretary, for “air bridges” for travellers from countries with low rates of Covid-19, but said the Government’s apparent dismissal of the plan “without due consultation” was “completely wrong”.
“The people of this country do not wish to be prevented from travelling.
The Government itself has urged people to use their common sense in terms of their behaviour. Quite simply, it is time to switch the emphasis from protection to economic recovery, before it is too late,” they concluded.
However, Boris Johnson yesterday told MPS that “air bridges” with countries where the rate of infection was “at least as good” as that in the UK could be introduced by the end of June, if agreements could be reached in time.
“We want to drive the R down as fast
‘People do not wish to be prevented from travelling. The Government has urged people to use common sense’
as we can in this country and to have as sensible a quarantine scheme as possible and to keep flows as generous as we can,” the Prime Minister said.
The Home Office said quarantine was an essential part of the strategy to prevent a second wave of the virus and maintain a low transmission rate, and was backed by 80 per cent of people. The policy will be reviewed every three weeks, but a source said: “The key focus is stopping a potential second peak that would be incredibly damaging.”
♦ A poll of 2,700 people who had flights cancelled because of coronavirus found Ryanair passengers were the worst off, with eight in 10 still awaiting refunds. The survey, by the consumer watchdog Which?, also found three in five easyjet customers were waiting for their money back, and a quarter of BA customers.